Energy efficient OLSR performance evaluation under energy aware metrics

Mobile ad-hoc networks are one of the most active research areas in the wireless communications field. These networks do not need any fixed infrastructure or configuration, easily adapting to difficult scenarios and types of use. Since mobile nodes are often powered by limited batteries, energy is an important issue in MANETs since the lack of a node can lead to the partitioning of the network. In this paper, we analize the behavior of different energy-aware routing metrics applied to OLSR protocol, in order to verify their effectiveness in reducing energy consumption and prolonging network lifetime in combination with such a proactive routing protocol. We find that Minimum Drain Rate routing strategy is the better way to calculate paths between nodes in a network according to energy-saving needs, although this metric can have some drawback in the total amount of energy consumed in the network. We already tested as an hybrid approach (like Conditional MDR) can mitigate this drawback.